What Can Possibly Go Wrong Here?

Can somebody please explain exactly what in the godforsaken fuck the United States of America is doing in the Middle East? All answers containing the phrases "last superpower," "national will," "war against terror," or "Frank Gaffney" will be disqualified by The Judges. Things are falling apart in Iraq but, don't worry, very smart and serious people in Washington have found another bloody mess into which they can propel the country.

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Syrian rebels say they have seized a military air base in Aleppo province, almost a year after they laid siege to the facility, one of the last remaining government holdouts in the northern Syria province.

Hooray for our side! No, wait, what's this?

The final thrust, they said, was kicked off by two suicide bombers - foreign fighters with the Al Qaeda-linked Islamic State of Iraq and the Sham - who attacked loyalist soldiers with explosives-laden armored vehicles. A 12-hour firefight ensued and by nightfall Monday, rebel fighters from the Islamist group as well as several Free Syrian Army brigades claimed full control over the airport.

That would be the al Qaeda that was not in Iraq until we came over in our last excellent adventure, but that was there about 11 seconds after we arrived, and that now appears to be outsourcing itself to other lands. It appears that the rebels, whom we are now arming, may have blown the crap out of a couple of villages, too. I hate to sound naive, but we have blown so much of our credibility in that region that we may never get any of it back. At the very least, we're not the honest broker that can get the people there to stop slaughtering each other. The people there can't seem to get themselves to stop slaughtering each other. Arming one side or the other -- and winding up handing arms to an al Qaeda affiliate that wouldn't even exist were it not for our previous cock-up in the region -- strikes me as something the British Empire would have done had it been run by the Ritz Brothers. Our whole foreign policy is a wilderness of whoopie cushions, with IED's.

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